The Edson Youth Council gave a presentation to town council this month, detailing their projects undertaken in 2023/2024.
The Youth Council chose to focus on homelessness this year, specifically preventing homelessness in youths. The Youth Council also had a booth at the Edson Trade Show where they educated the public on services that are available for the unhoused in Edson and raised $1,250.00 for the Edson Food Bank through a 50/50.
Calleigh Martin, who is on her first term with the Youth Council, says the Council is looking forward to similar opportunities.
“With such a huge success this year we hope the trade show will continue giving us opportunities to be involved in the community,” says Martin.
Maya Dalueg, who is on her second term with the Youth Council, also noted the Council had environmental concerns close to the top of their list of priorities.
“One of our other big topics that we were concerned about is always the environment,” says Dalueg. “So we handed out 500 saplings this year again from Weyerhaeuser and they all got accepted and hopefully planted bringing our community more green.”
The Edson Youth Council is also taking steps to be engaged with the community through volunteer work with each Youth Council member committing at least 16 hours of volunteer work. “But many of us do more than that,” says Martin.
Dalueg says the Youth Council enjoys spending time with residents at the Edson Extended Care Facility as part of their commitment to community engagement.
“It’s a great opportunity to lessen the age gap and learn about their past and show them what we do currently as youth and what we are working towards,” explains Dalueg. “We do lots of fun projects with them and hang out. We just recently planted the garden there.”
“We had lots of questionnaire activities and the residents would tell us about things they used to do in the past and then compared them to what we do now such as our Easter traditions and stuff like that,” says Martin.
The newest project the Youth Council is working on is a code of conduct for the Edson Leisure Centre, developed with input from the youths who frequent the facility.
“A few of us went and talked to the youth at the Leisure Center who were using the facility and we asked them what their opinion was on the current code of conduct and the rules that were in place and what they thought we could do to improve those rules,” explains Dalueg. “A few of us collaborated and created a little list of a new code of conduct that we are going to present to the Leisure Centre and see what they think about it and see if they want to implement some of the ideas we had.”
Edson Mayor Kevin Zahara thanked the Youth Council for their continued dedication to the community.
“Thank you very much for your presentation and all of Youth Council for your unbelievable contributions this past year volunteering everywhere. It seems like every event I went to you guys were at, so we really appreciate that and the contributions and feedback you’ve given to council as well.”
